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Beware of holiday phishing attacks

December 26, 2012

Our campus is constantly under attack by a barrage of attempts to steal personal information (aka phishing). Often these attacks come during holidays when campus IT support is unavailable. Even when you can’t contact the IT Service Center there are still clues and resources to help you figure out if the e-mail you have received is legitimate or a phishing attempt. More at www.colorado.edu/oit/news/holiday-phishing.

The most important thing to remember is that the university will never send e-mail asking for your private data (e.g. passwords, SSNs, credit card numbers, etc.) and you should be suspicious of messages that direct you to provide this information. If you think it might be a phishing attempt, it probably is.

Many phishing attempts try to lure you in by saying you must respond to keep your e-mail account active because you have reached your quota limit. If you’re account resides on the campus Microsoft Exchange service (this applies to most faculty and staff), you can check your quota by logging into https://exchangequota.colorado.edu/quotawebapp. If your account resides on CULink, you can check your quota in the web app (https://culink.colorado.edu/) in the top blue bar.